I hope everyone had a good week and a rest filled Saturday. Tomorrow's Easter and I'm ready to eat some candy-filled eggs (who isn't?!). To help keep things on track, all site introductions will be reviewed Monday at 6 EST. How's that for consistency!

Community of the Week

It's my honor to announce that Mass Themes is the Community of the Week! The website was created by MassThemes and is a web design company.

Mass Themes takes the saying "First impressions are everything" to heart. The entire site has a very clean and uniform design to it. This helps ensure that all the pages feel like they're part of something bigger, though they each serve a unique purpose. Color is used sparingly but appropriately, drawing attention to things that are important, such as links. Every detail of the website has been customized, from the subtle yet defined background to the color of the icons in the Skysa bar.

Congratulations once again to MassThemes of, uh... Mass Themes! Stop by their [very creative] introduction post for more information.

Time is ticking away for the Spruz Community Competition, the winner of which will receive six months of free upgrades with Spruz among many other fabulous prizes. There are only two more sites that will be featured, so if you'd like a shot at it post an introduction that follows the guidelines we've provided.

Suggestion of the Week

This week's suggestion comes from Sol Olsen. They proposed that the "Invite" page get a revamp, making it much easier for members to use. The main change would be better categorization and a cleaner interface than what exists currently. Stop by the topic and share your opinion!

Tip of the Week

This week's tip is actually a collection of them provided by Gazac, the winner of last week's "Community of the Week" title. All of them make use of the easy to use "Custom Modifiers" system built into the Spruz platform.

Life's unpredictable, and there's nothing better than a week with almost no internet access to teach you that. From this week on the Community Spotlight will be posted on Saturday instead of Friday, which will help ensure it gets out when it's supposed to.

Community of the Week

I'm happy to announce that Elite Tactical Gamer is our Community of the Week! The website was created by Gazac and caters to those who enjoy first person shooters.

This website is a great example of how customizable websites built on the Spruz platform are. With a little CSS knowhow it's possible to make your site stand out from the rest. Small changes like the navigation buttons moving when they're clicked on give the site just that much more personality. If you look at the rest of the home page you'll see plenty of other examples, such as the "ETG Blog" and "Recent Posts" elements having a unique header to help draw attention to them. Customization may take some time, but it's well worth it!

Congratulations to Gazac and all the Elite Tactical Gamer community! Stop by their introduction page to learn more about the site. You can also stop by their topic requesting feedback on the new design.

This marks the halfway point for the Spruz Community Competition. There are still three more sites that will be featured, so if you'd like a shot at it post an introduction that follows the guidelines we've provided.

Suggestion of the Week

This week's suggestion is fragnoli's. He recommends that each member be given their own RSS feed which others can subscribe to if they like a specific writer. Sites with several writers would certainly benefit from this as users would only be alerted to content they know they'll want to read. If you have any more ideas on how it can be improved stop on in the thread and share it with the rest of the community.

Tip of the Week

This week's tip is one that was posted a while back but that I'm sure many users will find helpful, and explains how to get out of CSS mode. If you switch into "CSS Mode" (an advanced option that makes it easier to customize your site with CSS) it makes it impossible to use the regular editing features found under "Customize" in the "Appearance" tab. Generally it's impossible to get out of this mode, but one member has found a way to change it if you entered CSS mode and realized it wasn't what you wanted.

I'm a strong believer in cutting through the clutter and getting to the point of things. Sadly I made you read these introduction lines, which only delayed getting into all the great stuff we have in our Community Spotlight.

Community of the Week

You Gab Sports -- owned and opporated by fragnoli -- is this week's featured community! The site covers a wide range of sports, and calls itself "Your New Voice In Sports."

This site is different than the last few that have been featured in that it is very "content heavy." A quick look at the news element on the right hand side of the home page shows the level of commitment the leaders have to their subject and site. The hard work seems to be paying off as the majority of the news posts are engaging members in discussion, the sign of a healthy community.

The danger any site that covers a large topic -- be it sports, entertainment or any number of other topics -- is that it's more difficult to build a dedicated user base. The reason is because visitors don't want to work for their information; they want it to be easy to find, and they want it now. You Gab Sports sidesteps this issue by dividing the content they have on their site into different pages based on the sport it's talking about. This allows members to catch up on what they enjoy, while making it easy to explore other parts of the site.

Congratulations to fragnoli and all the YouGabSports community! Stop by their introduction page to learn more about the site.

This marks the halfway point for the Spruz Community Competition. There are still four more sites that will be featured, so if you'd like a shot at it post an introduction that follows the guidelines we've provided.

Suggestion of the Week

This week's suggestion is by AareuZ. In the topic "Photo Gallery Improvement" he recommends that site admins be able to feature photos within a gallery instead of it being picked at random. The idea quickly expanded as more members provided their ideas, including being able to select a photo as the "cover photo" for a specific album. If you have any more ideas on how it can be improved stop on in the thread and share it with the rest of the community.

Tip of the Week

This week's tip is actually several wrapped into one. MASTER5x has taken the time to provide the community with links to resources that you may find useful in your site. They include a free mailblast/newsletter service as well as a support ticket service. Feel free to add links to some services you think the rest of the community would find useful as well.

This week's Community Spotlight is finally finished. My apologies for the delay, but sadly it was unavoidable.

Community of the Week

It's my honor to announce that Growing Forward is the Community of the Week! The site is owned an operated by IanDigs, a forum regular that I'm sure many of you have interacted with.

Visitors are greeted with a welcome message that draws them in to the rest of the site by highlighting some of the main features that can be had there. As you scroll down the home page it soon becomes clear that community is central to the entire site. The community centric elements create a buzz around the entire website that makes you interested in what else is going on.

Something that really stuck out to me was how open the leadership seemed to be. Simple touches such as displaying the site moderators show potential members that they are there to help them and interact. One of the worst things a moderator can do is make themselves untouchable to the rest of the community. People need to know that the leadership is interested in hearing from and interacting with regular members.

Congratulations to IanDigs and all the members of Growing Forward. Feel free to stop by the site's introduction to learn more.

Remember that we have six more sites to be featured for the first Spruz Community Competition. If you'd like your site to be featured post an introduction that follows the guidelines we've provided. If you've already posted an introduction we wish you the best of luck!

Suggestion of the Week

This week's suggestion comes from PS3plus, who recommends that site administrators be allowed to make all member profiles on their site "friend only" viewing access. He suggests that this would make protecting the privacy of members easier for site admins, while being optional for those who want an "open" site. Stop by the topic to provide your feedback on the idea.

Feel free to share your opinions on this idea, if you'd use it and any other suggestions you have to improve it.

Tip of the Week

Maintaining a website can be hard work, but creating an "Admin Page" can help. Learn more by reading this topic in the Tips and Tricks forum.

If there's a tip you think other site owners would find helpful please post it in this topic.

Hope everyone enjoyed their week, even if the weekend couldn't come soon enough!

I'd like to take a minute and remind everyone to post a introduction of your site using the new format mentioned in last week's spotlight. We have a nice bit of news we're tentatively going to be sharing on Monday that makes use of introductions that have been posted

We won't be posting a "community" related thread this week in anticipation for Monday's announcement. It's worth the wait, I promise!

This week's featured idea is "New Page Layout Suggestions" by Meuslix. In it Meuslix has described (and drawn!) some new layout ideas for Spruz sites which he and others feel would increase website owner's ability to customize their sites. It's gotten some great feedback already, but there's no such thing as too much! Voice your opinion and